The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (DSM-5) includes sensory alterations as one of the four characteristics of restricted / repetitive behavior of people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). It defines this symptom characteristic as a «hyper- or hyporeactivity to sensory inputs or an unusual interest for sensory aspects of the environment» […]
Zoë Firth & Priscila Borba Borges, students, European Master’s in Clinical Linguistics (EMCL+) and Adrià Rofes (advisor) ‘ I can’t control my brain’. So sang Weezer in their 2001 hit ‘Island in the Sun’; how fitting, then, that this was the song teenager Kira Iaconetti chose to sing during her brain surgery. That’s right: during […]
The needs imposed by a globalized society that maintains activity 24 hours a day and 7 days a week are being addressed by increasing working hours and extending work activity into the weekend. Karoshi, which can be translated literally as “overwork death” in Japanese, is occupational sudden mortality. In Asian countries, the risk of karoshi […]
Health • Microbiology • Neurobiology • Neuroscience • Physiology
Gut microbiota has a surprising importance in processes related to the development of the nervous system, its functioning and to psychology and behavior, both in people and in animals. The microorganisms produce substances that after crossing the intestinal epithelium reach the blood and through it and after crossing the blood-brain barrier they reach the brain […]
An allele is each of the alternative forms that the same gene can have. The alleles differ in their DNA sequence and can manifest in different results after expressing that gene, such as differences in the color of the eyes or in the blood group. Human beings are diploid, we have two sets of chromosomes […]
Maternal and paternal stress have been proved to be critical aspects of off-spring brain development. High levels of stress on pregnant mothers can alter both placental and embryonic gene expression patterns, misprogramming the brain of the newborn towards psychiatric disorders such as anxiety or depression. At the same level, paternal stress alters microRNAs and other […]
Educational attainment, the years a person spends within the education system, generates interest among scientists because statistical analysis shows that there is a relationship between that value and different aspects of life including income when adults, state of health and even life expectancy. Geneticists analyze trends that can explain variations within a population by exploring […]
The reward pathway is a group of brain structures connected to each other that are key in the processes of motivation (desire, motivation, craving), associative learning (operant reinforcement and positive conditioning) and in positive emotions, particularly those in which pleasure has a fundamental component such as joy, euphoria and ecstasy. The reward is an attractive […]
Little children with autism have more lead and less zinc and manganese than children of the same age without autism. The study has been published in the journal Nature Communications and has been carried out by a team from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) […]
Each of the Voyager probes, two unmanned spacecrafts launched in 1977, has a gold-plated audio-visual disc, a recording that aims to introduce us to a possible alien and to show the diversity of living beings and cultures that planet Earth has. Carl Sagan said that «The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only […]